The present application relates to a slide glass storage device, a conveying device and a microscope system, and is suitable for application, for example, to the field of observing a biological sample (living body sample) through magnification.
Heretofore, as a technique of observing a biological sample, there has been widely used a technique in which the biological sample is placed on a stage of a microscope and is observed by the observer's naked eye.
On the other hand, in recent years, there has been proposed a microscope system corresponding to the so-called virtual slide system in which an image sensing element is disposed at the focal position of an ocular of a microscope, namely, at a location corresponding to the observer's eye, and image data representing a biological sample in a magnified form is formed.
The thus formed image data has various advantages in that the image data can be presented to the observer in the state of being displayed on a display unit of a computer system or the like, the image data is excellent in storage properties and reproducibility, the image data can be easily transmitted to a remote place, and so on.
Particularly, in the case where it is desired to form multiple pieces of image data of biological samples, it may be necessary in the microscope system to repeat a replacing treatment of preliminarily preparing a multiplicity of slide glasses, supplying one sheet of the slide glass onto a stage, performing a photographing treatment (image pick-up treatment) and then replacing the slide glass.
In view of this, examples of the microscope systems which have been proposed include one in which, in order to automate the replacing treatment, one sheet of slide glass at a time is taken out from a cassette in which a plurality of rows of stacks each having slide glasses stacked at a predetermined interval are contained, and the thus taken-out slide glass is conveyed along a rectilinear direction, to be sequentially set onto a stage one by one (see, for example, PCT Patent Publication No. WO2006/098442 (FIGS. 1 and 3), hereinafter referred to as Patent Document 1).